


Giving me faith to get me through the night

by itswheremydemonshide10



Category: Emmerdale, Roblivion - Fandom, robron
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, M/M, Minor Injuries, Not Overly Graphic, Panic, Underage Drinking, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 16:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11422173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itswheremydemonshide10/pseuds/itswheremydemonshide10
Summary: Robert and Liv (because that’s the only dad!rob content we need rn amirite?) hurt/comfort. Featuring domestic fluff, bonding and general drunkenness.





	Giving me faith to get me through the night

Stupid. You’re stupid.

You keep walking down the street, head down, eyes stinging with unshed tears.

Why did you think this was a good idea?

The guy was a creep. The party was full of weirdos.

It’s dark. The only light comes from the hazy, buzzing streetlights.

They’ll be so angry at you. They’ll want you to leave. And it’s all your own fault.

The shops you pass are all closed-up for the night. The curtains drawn in the houses.

You’ve drank too much. You feel sick. Your head is spinning. But you keep walking. Fast. Faster.

You can still hear the blaring police sirens, the blue lights flashing behind your eyes every time you blink.

It’s starting to rain. You’re cold. Didn’t you leave the house with a jacket? Probably. You’re not wearing it now. You wrap your arms around yourself. It doesn’t help.

You keep walking. You need to get home. Faster still.

Your ankle throbs. You can feel the warm stickiness of blood seeping into your shoe.

Someone shouts drunkenly somewhere further back down the street behind you. You’re not sure if they’re shouting at you or not. You don’t stop to find out. Faster.

The realisation that you don’t know where you are or where you’re going creeps up on you slowly.

There’s heavy, panting breaths. You quickly look around you. No one there. The panic is your own.

You would give anything to be tucked up in bed at home right now. Warm, unconcerned, safe.

You lost track of your bag around the same time as your jacket. It’s only when your back pocket buzzes that you remember. Your phone wasn’t in the bag.

You pull it out, but you don’t stop walking. You ignore the twitter notification. You go to your contacts. He is the first person you instinctively think of. You call him.

\--

It’s past 2am when Robert finally shuts off the water and steps out of the shower to dry off. He pulls on his boxers and an old white t-shirt, and quickly towel dries his hair, eager to finally get into bed. The warm water had only done so much to ease the ache in his neck and shoulders from where he has been hunched over his laptop for hours, trying to untangle the mess that Jimmy had somehow made of the Home James accounts.

Robert knew that if Aaron was home he would have berated him for being a workaholic and dragged him to bed long before now. But Aaron is out on the lash in town with Adam, and Liv is sleeping over at Gabby’s, which left Robert with the rare and peaceful solitude of the Mill to get stuck into his work.

Robert hears his phone ringing from the bedroom, where he had left it on charge. He snorts softly and moves towards the room to answer it. Even though it was the early hours of the morning, Robert was half-expecting a call from Aaron, who had more than once drunk-dialled him from a bar or taxi during a night out, usually to say something soppy that he would then deny the next morning.

But Robert’s phone didn’t light up with it’s usual “Hubby x”. Instead it was Liv’s name that appeared, above a picture that Robert had taken of her when they were decorating the Mill, her smile full of mischief and a large streak of paint across her right cheek. He picks up on the last ring.

“Liv, what’s up? You okay?”

Liv’s answering voice is distant and shaky.

“Robert! Can you…. I’m sorry… can you come and get me?”

“Where are you, at Gabby’s house?” Robert demands quickly, worry rising. Since when does Liv ask for help?

“I’m…no I’m not at… I don’t know where I am… look please don’t be mad but I lied ok…” Liv pauses, Robert can hear her breathing heavily before she speaks again, like she’s been running.

“I didn’t really go to Gabby’s I went to a house party in Hotten with this lad from school, but it all kicked off so I left and…and now I don’t know where I am… Rob, what do I do?”.

By the time she stops speaking, Robert has already put his phone on loudspeaker and put the device down on the bed so he can grab the closest pair of jeans he owns from the wardrobe, and Aaron’s purple hoodie from the hook on the back of the door to throw on.

“You said you’re in Hotten? Where exactly?” he shouts towards his phone.

“I already said I don’t know!” Liv snaps back, indignance failing to mask her fear.

“Ok. Ok just… stay calm alright? I’m coming to look for you. Don’t hang up ok?”.

At that Robert dashes out of the room, phone in hand and down the stairs. He gets as far as the front door of the apartment before he dashes back to the kitchen table for his forgotten car keys.

As soon as he’s run through the rain, jumped in his car, and switched on the engine, all in record time, Robert places his phone in his lap so he can talk and drive. Shooting quickly out of the driveway, before he speaks.

“Liv, you still there?”

“Yeah, mmhere” she mumbles back.

“What can you see? Is there anything around you that might tell me where you are? Any road signs?”

“No… it’s just houses”

Robert runs his hand through his still damp hair, tries to quell his own rising panic. The last thing Liv needs is him losing the plot.

“Can you look it up on your phone? If you hang up for a couple of minutes, get google maps up and tell me what road you’re on. Then call me back, can you do that?”

“Erm…yeah I think so.”

“Ok. Do it. Then ring me straight back ok?”

“Yeah ok.”

Robert can’t help but sigh heavily when she hangs up. Wondering, not for the first time, how on earth he found himself co-parenting a troublesome teenage girl at 2:30 in the morning. But he also can’t deny the hard, sick feeling in his gut that he knows won’t go away until Liv is with him. Until she’s home.

Robert keeps driving towards Hotten, his foot hard on the accelerator. The rain coming down heavier now, his windscreen wipers squeaking, a chill in the air.

After what feels like an hour, but is probably no more than a couple of minutes, his phone rings, making him jump in the eerie quiet.

“Liv?”

“Yeah… um, it said I’m on Queen’s Road… I don’t know where that is but…” Liv stutters out, before Robert cuts across her.

“That’s ok, I do. Can you stay there and wait for me? Is it safe for you to wait where you are?”

“I think so. I can’t see anyone around.”

“Good, find the brightest part of the street and wait for me, I’m on my way.”

\--

Liv squats down to sit on the low wall under the nearest streetlight. Her hands still shaking, wet hair plastered to her head as the rain refuses to let up, and now she’s stopped moving her ankle is hurting more. She focusses on the phone she’s holding by her ear to try and ignore the ache, listens to the sound of Robert shifting to change gear. But she can’t stop her head swivelling left and right, checking that the street is still deserted. She sees car lights in the distance, but they turn off far down the road.

“Are you gonna be long?” she can’t help but ask. She just wants to go home.

“2 minutes” Robert replies.

When he finally pulls up, Liv is so grateful to see his poncy car and dumb face, that the second he’s upright, she barrels into him and holds on to him with a death grip. The tears finally begin to fall now, mingling with the rain and falling onto Robert’s chest as she feels his hand come up to cradle the back of her head.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry!” She gasps.

“Shh shh, it’s ok, you’re ok… I’m here now”. Robert holds her close for several beats, before pulling back to get a good look at her. Eyes widening when his concerned gaze lands on her bloody foot.

“You’re hurt! Why didn’t you say so? What happened?” he demands in one breath.

“It’s fine, I just tripped, it’s not even that bad.” But before Liv has even finished speaking, Robert is pulling his – Aaron’s – hoodie off and is wrapping it around her frozen arms, before helping her round to the passenger side door.

She wants to tell him to knock it off, that she’s capable of getting into a car, that she’s not a baby. But she doesn’t.

Instead she lets him help her into the car before he doubles back round and gets in to the drivers’ seat, listens to his assurances that he’ll see to her foot once they get home, and focuses on the comforting warmth of the car that spreads through her in stark contrast to the frigid wind and rain outside. She slips her arms into the sleeves of the hoodie, even though they’re far too long for her and they drown her hands. She can’t resist pulling one sleeve up to her nose, inhaling the faint combined smell of Robert’s posh shower gel, and Aaron’s cheap body spray. She would later blame her wayward thoughts on the vodka she had drank, but in that moment Liv couldn’t help thinking that the old, ratty hoodie smells like home.

\--

By the time Robert pulls up into the driveway of the Mill, Liv is fast asleep. She had stayed awake just long enough to tell him what had happened. How she had got Gabby to cover for her so she could get the bus into Hotten to meet some lad called Ben, whose older brother was throwing a house party while their parents were away. How she had regretted it when Ben spent the whole time getting smashed and leering at all the girls. How some of the older lads had got into fight with some guys who had tried to gatecrash the party, culminating in a large, drunken brawl on the front lawn and the neighbours calling the police. At which point, Liv had told him, she’d panicked and ran from the house and down the street, but not before stumbling on a loose paving stone and scraping her ankle.

She looks peaceful now, under the glow of the Mill’s porch light. Bundled up in the purple hoodie, head resting on the window, all bright pink cheeks and messy, slowly drying hair. Robert doesn’t want to wake her when she looks like this, but he knows he needs to. He might just be able to carry her into the house, but there was no way he could get her up the spiral staircase. Ignoring the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Aaron saying “well you chose the damn thing, what’s wrong with a normal staircase?”, he reaches over to shake Liv’s shoulder gently, not wanting to scare her.

Once he’s guided a sleepy and unsteady Liv into the house, he instructs her to go up the bathroom and wait, and is surprised when she doesn’t argue. Robert stops by the kitchen to fetch a glass of water and the first aid kit from the cupboard by the sink, before following her upstairs.

He’s not surprised that as he reaches the half-open bathroom door, he hears Liv retching and enters to see her hunched over the toilet, pale and groaning. Robert crouches by her side, brushes her hair away from her face and keeps a hand between her shoulder blades until it stops. It takes a few minutes and several flushes of the toilet for her stomach to stop heaving enough that she can sit on the closed lid of the toilet and sip gingerly from the glass of water that Robert has brought her.

However, she has recovered enough that she is able to summon an eye-roll when Robert encourages her to lift her leg up into his lap, where he is perched on the edge of the bathtub, so that he can see to her foot.

“Ouch! Some nurse you’d be” Liv complains when he starts dabbing at her cut with a damp cloth to try and clean out any dirt.

“Well don’t drink so much next time, and you might find it easier to stay on your feet!” Robert retorts.

There’s no heat behind either of their comments, their eyes too understanding, but the bantering makes things feel more normal.

Thankfully once the smeared blood had been cleaned away, the cut isn’t too bad. Robert works quickly but thoroughly, adding antiseptic cream and dressing Liv’s foot.

“There! Should be fine, just keep it clean so if doesn’t get infected ok?” he tells her.

“Ok…. I’m gonna go to bed now I think” Liv says as she limps toward the door, leaving Robert to turn around and clean up.

He thinks she’s gone, so he jumps a little when she speaks again.

“Robert?” Liv says, voice small and quiet, hand still on the door handle.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for… this… everything. Look, I know I’m not your kid, so you didn’t have to turn out in the middle of the night to… you know…look after me… and stuff. Most people would have just shouted at me…” She trails off awkwardly, her tired face tinged with a blush that has nothing to do with the weather this time.

Watching the discomfort and uncertainty flit across Liv’s face makes something in Robert’s chest seize. Because he knows that feeling. The feeling that you’re too much trouble to be worth anyone’s time or effort, that you’re too much of a fuck-up and that everyone will leave you eventually. The feeling of not knowing where you belong, or who with. His heart aches with empathy.

“Liv. I meant what I said when Aaron was in prison – you deserve to be looked after properly. And besides, we’re family now, it’s what we do” Robert says softly.

“Although” he continues, less softly this time. “Don’t think this is the end of it. I’ll be telling Aaron about your little adventure, and you are so going to be grounded tomorrow!”

“Ugh!” Liv groans and rolls her eyes, but the whole sarcastic attitude is undermined by the grateful unshed tears in her eyes. Her mouth tugging up into a genuine smile, even as she turns and heads down the hall to her room to face-plant her bed.

\--

It’s almost 4am by the time Robert’s cleaned up the first aid supplies and checked on a now passed out Liv. He leaves a fresh glass of water on her bedside table, tucks her duvet in around her, and makes sure that she is lying on her side with her bin nearby in case her stomach tries to rebel again. When he finally crashes into his own bed, his shoulders ache more than ever, and his eyes itch with tiredness.

Robert is seconds away from sleep, when he hears a car door slam, shortly followed by the creak of the front door and footsteps on the stairs.

Aaron.

Robert silently prays that his husband isn’t in as rough a state as his sister. One vomiting person is more than enough for one night.

“What time do ya call this then?” Robert can’t resist asking cheekily.

He can’t see Aaron in the darkness but he can tell that his husband jumps.

“Sorry, I thought you’d be asleep by now… didn’t wanna wake ya.” Thankfully he only sounds slightly tipsy.

“Ha! Chance would be a fine thing!” Robert mumbles into his pillow as he listens to Aaron strip down to his underwear, swearing as he stubs his toe on the dresser in the dark, before sliding into bed behind him.

“What’s up? Can’t sleep? I bet you were up late working again weren’t ya?” Aaron says, as he moves to wrap his arm around Robert, their legs tangling as he spoons Robert from behind.

“Long story. I’ll tell you in the morning.” Robert responds, deciding that there was no point getting Aaron worked up at 4am, now that Liv is home safe.

“Mmmkay” Aaron mumbles. Pressing a kiss to the back of Robert’s neck where his breath is gently tickling his skin. He smells vaguely of beer and kebab, but his mouth is gentle and his body is warm and comforting.

The last coherent thought Robert has is that everyone is now home, curled up safe and sound - right where they belong.


End file.
